A teacher who dint want to be a teacher PART-2

Don't read this if u haven't read PART-1



"This is a kismet connection", Ms.Viji suddenly said!

"What?"

"You have no idea, Radhika.. but i think you and i are connected in a deep way. we were destined to meet and talk"

"What are you telling,Ms.Viji? I don't understand.."

"U said dance was once your passion,dint u? do u know what my passion was?" asked Ms.Viji.

"Er.. teaching?"

"Of course, u r right Radhika! i loved teaching.. and i still do... the sense of satisfaction you get when someone listens and understands what u r coming to say is something unfathomable! You may think becoming a teacher was such a simple ambition.. but there was a lot more to it ..

And Radhika now listened as Ms.Viji started narrating her story-

"As an eldest of the three children in my family, i got used to helping my brothers with their homework at an age of seven. My happiest moments were when they scored high marks in their exams..  I always smiled my proud smile and patted them on their backs. It was then that i decided i had to become a teacher!

" When u have ambitions, u always have hurdles to cross and dilemmas to face. No matter how small or big ur dream is, u'll always have to deal with obstacles. Some of them will even make u forget u had an ambition in the 1st place. . . I understood this and decided not to let anything come between my dream and i."

" But i fell in love, radhika . . just like you. . ! I fell in love with my college classmate, Arvindh. We were doing our 2nd year in English-literature then.
Those days were so dream-like, like in movies. we constantly exchanged letters, had dinners together and he wrote poems like no one else! He once said - "Without you, i can survive. But only with you, i can live my life, princess..". Aren't those words so beautiful? I can never forget them in my life.

Arvindh was a basketball player. He was representing the state and was already playing national tournaments.. He hardly attended college, but yet, he made it a point to meet me everyday. In empty street corners, pubs, under the college tree, library and sometimes at my own house!
I loved Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' because of him. On one of my birthdays, he came home with a bunch of flowers at 12 in the night, stood under the balcony and quoted Shakespeare's dialogues..!"

" I can keep talking about him for ages, Radhika. . .because he's the only man i've ever loved!  But the point is- I dint marry him! We parted ways.. And i haven't seen him for 10 years now!"

"Oh god!", spluttered Radhika "why dint u? what happened?"

"He was a basketball player.. He was always travelling. And if i married him, i was supposed to accompany him on his trips too. When u r a sportsman's wife, it is something obligatory. U must travel along with him everywhere...!

But i told him about my dream of becoming a teacher and creating a niche for myself. I told him that it was a passion i cherished all my life; and that i can't keep traveling.!

So thats how it ended. He couldn't give up his passion and i couldn't give up mine! Sort of a clash of passions,ain't it? But we were quite stubborn"

"Now i'm a teacher! But I'm a spinster. i don't have a family of my own. After Arvindh, i couldn't think of anyone else in his place..So i guess I'll die an old maid with a Shakespeare's book in hand"

Radhika couldn't get herself to say anything. So Ms.Viji continued..

"So here am i, a woman who lost her love and her personal life for her passion. And here are you, a woman who's situation is exactly the other way round. In a way, both of us seem to regret our decisions. We look back at old times and wish we had taken the other route, don't we?

It reminds me of the poem-' Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost - 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;' "

"Ya, U r right", said Radhika." We are in the same ground, but different sides. Like opposite goal posts, but playing the same game"

"EXACTLY!", said Ms.Viji.

Radhika removed her spectacles and rubbed her eyes.Her usual bland look was surprisingly missing. One could see how much the pair of specs affected her appearance for worse.

"U look wonderful", said Ms.Viji " .Why don't you start dancing again?"

"U look wonderful too", said Radhika ".Why don't you get married?"

There was a silence. and this time, the silence was mutual!

They knew it was not gonna be the same from now. Woman instincts were screaming at them that things were gonna change. . .  And they waited in silence. .

I WANNA PUBLISH THE FINAL PART TOO. . . BUT I'LL BE MOTIVATED TO WRITE AND PUBLISH ONLY IF SOMEONE ASKS ME TO. .

A Teacher who din't Want to be a TEACHER part-1

We've all had experiences where we'd have wanted to do something, but ended up doing something else. Like u would have wanted to be a pilot, but by the turn of events, would have become an engineer; or u would have wished to marry the guy/girl, u were in love with. . but finally married an other person arranged by your parents. U wouldn't have had any interest in a particular job, but would have been forced to do it just coz its required of u.  At all these times, whenever people see us do the work without any sign of interest, the advice most commonly given is -accept the change n try to live life, move on, don't fret blah blah n such crap!  So we think they r right and try hard to accept what we've got! But. . Is it the right thing to do? Can we really program ourselves against our basic interests and live a contended life? Will the work we do turn out fruitful? Radhika wasn't meant to be a teacher. And a chemistry teacher? No way! But she became a chemistry teacher. She wore glasses, carried notebooks & answer-papers wherever she went and assumed a highly moody profile, for she thought, that's how teachers were meant to be. In school, none of Radhika's students thought she was anything of the interesting type. Nor did they pay attention to her boring lectures. She had a monotonous voice like the clock's ticking, so the students usually had little competitions over who would stay awake the longest in her classes. Sometimes, sitting in the staff-room with all the answer sheets to be corrected, she wondered how her life would have been if she hadn't graduated in chemistry, if she hadn't closed doors on her passion, and if she hadn't married so soon . . . sometimes it made her gloomy, and at all these times, she ended up venting out all her bottled up frustrations on her poor students; she screamed at them for whispering in class, scratched the notebooks with red ink for shabby handwriting, hit them for hurting each other and on the whole, behaved like an absolutely spoilt teacher! On one boring Wednesday, Radhika was explaining 'Fractional distillation of coal' to class VIII-B. It was a pretty dull topic. Or at least for her, it was dull... it was chemistry that had made her give up her passion & she hadn't forgotten that! But then, she noticed Anand and Rajiv making notes from what she was teaching. That lightened her mood. She appreciated them n made them class leaders. Though she dint like the subject herself, she liked the students who took interest in it.. Because heart of hearts, she wanted to be a good teacher. . and more than that, a likeable teacher. . Radhika got reminded of how popular and likeable she had been in her school and college days. . But now, she was an unnoticed and a normal lady whose life was normal in every way. She had a nice husband, a nice kid and a nice job at hand. .  "What more could she want?" One might ask . . .but the answer for it, even she couldn't give. Radhika's basic nature demanded her to be the center of attention. She had to perform and she had to be popular. But being stuck up in a place she didn't expect to, gave her a sickly temperament. Suddenly, as she was teaching, there was an outburst from the next class, which woke up all the students (and herself) from their half-sleepy state. Cheers, applause and screams were issuing from there that she sent Rajiv to check what was going on. Rajiv returned a couple of minutes later with an excited face.  "Its English class, ma'm! Viji mam is teaching the new lesson", he told excitedly. "What? It sounds like circus. Why are they making such a noise if she's just teaching a lesson? I think I'd better go & ask her to control her students." "Its English class, mam", he repeated as if she hadn't heard him " her classes are fun" And that did it. It was like a slap on the face for radhika. She knew her classes were boring. But being informed about the fact by one of her favorite students was too much for her. Coz she was not the type of a woman who accepted her flaws in public. She scowled at Rajiv for a moment and then went back to her reciting. That evening, as she packed her stuff, she felt weird. She knew something was not right with her. She looked at her appearance in the mirror in the rest room. Her plain eyes behind those hideous spectacles looked back at her. There was no sign of a smile on her face & she looked as dull as ever. "What the hell has happened to me?" she exclaimed! She touched her oily face, which had once been so soft and lovely, which had once made dozens of boys come behind her, and which had once won her a college beauty queen title. "No. This is certainly not I. This is certainly not radhika. I want to be me. I want to be radhika!" she said out aloud! Just then someone came in. she looked around, embarrassed. It was Ms.Viji "I thought I heard someone scream here." she said.  "Er.. Well.. That was me, Ms.Viji. A lizard went past. And I'm mighty scared of them, u know.." said radhika. "A lizard, huh? But I thought I heard someone say-'I want to be me!'.. Was that the lizard, Ms.Radhika?" "Okay okay. I did scream out of my frustration. Does that bother you?" snapped radhika. "No. It doesn't." said Ms.Viji  "but I just want u to know that if u need someone to talk to, I'm always there, radhika." she added, squeezing Radhika's hand in a friendly way. Ms.Viji was a kind of teacher who thought of herself as a fairy godmother of everyone. She liked to comfort people around her, lend her shoulders or her handkerchief if anyone was to cry, etc. And she was a great listener. She understood that if someone is unhappy, it would make them feel better if someone just silently listened to their problems rather than jutting advice at them. And wherever she went, she had an aura around her, which made people feel relaxed and cheerful in her presence. So not surprisingly, even radhika succumbed to Ms.Viji talks.. She broke down and confided everything that was bothering her.. "You know Ms.Viji? in my school and college days, I was this very bubbly kind of a girl. It might be hard to believe for you, but I was that way. I had an irresistible fascination for dancing. There was never a function in my school and college without me dancing in it. But when the time came when I had to choose my profession, I went along with the herd. My family wasn't so game about me pursuing dance as a career. Besides, I wasn't courageous enough to take a stream that a very few people took. What if I failed? What if I ended up with no opportunities at all? How can I ever be independent if I wanted to? All these questions put me in a trauma. And I finally decided to graduate in chemistry." " But I was doing quite well in college. I scored good marks and was aiming for a seat in Pittsburgh University to do my post graduation. That way, I thought I would be well qualified to work in a great company and earn dollars." "But that's when fate took a turn. I fell in love with Kamal, a guy in my neighborhood, and who happened to be a software engineer and also a son of a well-to-do politician. So when Kamal's dad approached my parents for the marriage, they readily agreed, considering Kamal's job and his great family background." "And I was so much in love, that I dint care about my Pittsburgh dream or doing anything else. So I got married a month after passing out of college and let my ambitions go down the drain." "The first year of my marriage was great! Kamal was so sweet. I was enjoying being a home-maker, attending to my family and all that.. Then, it began getting on my nerves. This feeling of I'm-nothing-but-a-housewife kept hitting on me. Kamal said I could apply for the post of a schoolteacher as that was the only post I was qualified enough for. I hated it when he said that. However, I had to agree. I was qualified only for that". "Now that I'm here, I'm trying to accept what I got, what I chose for myself. Yet, I don't feel comfortable. It's like getting stuck up in a place u don't like. And whenever I try talking to my old friends who are all quite well off now, all they say is "don't keep sulking", "yours is a good life, get used to it", "accept what you've got", etc  Here, nobody recognizes me. i.e. I'm not much of a personality.. I'm dull, my classes are dull and I don't have a single thing that interests me anymore. Maybe I myself don't know what exactly my problem is. Well.. so that's my story Ms.Viji." They sat in silence for sometime. Ms.Viji was still squeezing Radhika's hand. "I know exactly how u feel, radhika". she said rather softly. Radhika looked up. There were tears in Ms.Viji eyes. Radhika instantly knew that there was a story behind this woman too. Along with the tears, she could see in her eyes, the emotions and the reminiscences. Radhika said nothing. Because it was Ms.Viji's turn to talk and she hadn't said anything more than one sentence. I'LL BE MOTIVATED TO WRITE AND PUBLISH THE REST OF MY STORY ONLY IF PEOPLE ASK ME TO. . .

:-(

Am i lonely? i do not know.. because most of the times when I'm alone, i invariably have something or the other to do. I have this flair for daydreaming which keeps me going!

But on days like this.. when it's raining so beautifully, i wish i could tell someone "wow, isn't that such a lovely day?"

Should i? or Should i not??

I'm sitting here with so many thoughts running across my mind. . should i or should i not post now? should i go to college tomorrow or should i not? should i give it a rest and stay away from my grueling schedule for a while or should i not?

sometimes in life, making decisions for even very simple things can get really tricky.

like if i go don't go to college tomorrow, i could get some rest (and perhaps even lose my dark circles). but what if the class councilors get screwy and make a big deal out of it? bcoz thats what most private engineering colleges usually like doing... and already my attendance is kinda pathetic..

and if i do go to college, I'm not sure if my time spent there would be worthwhile. The so called lecturers with their run-of-the-mill degrees would come and start off their monotonous drone and we'd use all our strengths to keep our eyes open...

sometimes to help myself from falling asleep, i would take a James Hadley Chase book to college and have a good read. Or my friends & i would start rediscovering & playing those old childish games - name place things animals, rajah-rani, hangman, Hollywood, etc etc

do u think this is a sane way of spending 8 hours a day???

if I'm at home, i could do a hundred other useful things, i could blog, read newspapers, books, help mom, do my dance shows, practice, prepare for competitive exams, help my bro with his lessons, etc etc.. the list is endless.

but if I'm at college, all i can do is park my seat on this chair for 8 hours and gaze blank-eyed at the weirdo on the dais.

it's almost 12:30 pm now. the weather is cold and the bedsheets look warm and inviting.. but tomorrow is Saturday and the thought of getting up early n going to college is turning me off... should i vent out my frustrations by writing more.. or should i sleep? should i sleep with my head facing up or sideways? ... should i... or should i not ????

FEAR

A bad dream,
A horrifying scream
Scared to be awake
I shiver n shake.
Cold night’s air
Eerie insects choir
Nobody near.
Oh.. Thats called fear!

5000ft height,
Vultures in flight.
Mountains all around,
Wind’s melancholy sound.
A bottomless pit
Echoes to hit
I try not to see, I try not to hear.
Gosh, now I know whats fear !

Hospital room
The impending doom.
Beloved in bed,
My eyes that are red.
The heaviness in heart,
Grief to go apart.
Plz don’t go, my dear!
Oh, I’m trembling in fear!

Every direction I see,
I’m scared to be
With fear in heart
& a mind to thwart,
I feel I’m caged
And deeply enraged.

Is there a way to flee from fear?
I ask god with a tear
Yes there is, god says,
A thousand many ways.
The best way for a good life’s scope
Is to have lots and lots of hope..